RSPhaseShifter — High Fidelity Phase Rotator

RANGE

This three position switch is used to select the range of the phase shifter.

The center Phase position, the “0” setting or Bypass mode, provides a means to compare the effect of the selected phase shift with the unprocessed, original phase of the source material.

FREQUENCY

The phase shift is dependent on the selected frequency setting. The Frequency control is either stepped for repeatability or continuous; your choice. Resonant frequency selection is managed by an 13 step ELMA–style control with the following frequencies:

Additional controls include a ±5 dB of gain refinement plus MIRROR, FLIP and δ (DELTA) modes for use during stereo operation.

What’s Your Headache?

For most applications, it makes sense to use RSPhaseShifter on just one channel, rather than on both stereo channels. A common example would be when a stereo pair of ambiance mics suffer from slightly different distances to a localized source. Additional uses include:

1. You have a DI’d bass track which sounds dry and lifeless. You drop that track into a project so you can re–amp it, and dial up a great re–amped sound. When you try to blend the DI track with the re–amped track, it sounds…awful! Just grab RSPhaseShifter, insert it into the DI’d track, and start off with a low frequency setting. Sweep the phase angle control and fine tune the frequency and…Bang! Suddenly, it sound awesome.
2. Another scenario would be you have a set of two distorted guitar tracks recorded with different guitars or amps but playing the same riff. They sound nasty because both are modeling–based guitar amp simulations. Just insert the stereo version of the RSPhaseShifter into one of those pair of tracks and play around in Mirror mode, so that both sides of your processing track are ganged. Within seconds, you will find a sweet spot where both guitars blend perfectly, because by sweeping through the phase angle control, you’re applying very complex comb filters which you could not create with other EQ.
3. Sometimes mixes or stems come in with a stereo panorama that’s simply too wide. The resulting mix is way dense and requires more careful crafting of the soundstage, so you start to narrow individual elements. But wait, as the elements becomes narrower, their timbre suffers…RSPhaseShifter to the rescue! Bring back the grunt and meat while folding down toward mono.
4. A common situation is you have closely spaced, multi–mic’ed sources, like a snare with top and bottom mics, some instrument with two mics, or an acoustic guitar with a mic and a piezo pickup. Just play around with the RSPhaseShifter on one of the feeds, preferably the one which is closest to the source, such as a piezo feed, and find the sweet spot by feel.
5. Yet another would be you’ve made a great acoustic stereo recording and have used supporting microphones, such as room, spot or far hall placements. To meld these into your main stereo pair, take your mains as the phase reference, and align one supporting mic after the other with the mains. This is easiest if your supporting sources are panned center and approximately the same level during phase alignment. Afterwards, you can set gain and panning back to taste.
6. Acoustical issues are often an annoyance at low frequencies. RSPhaseShifter works to…
• Minimize the influence of standing waves or room modes for a loudspeaker setup in conjunction with one or more subwoofers.
• Reduce the acoustical energy caused by low frequency cancellation in live sound applications.
• Acoustically optimize the sound field in studio and live sound environments.